


stumble through heaven

by qiras



Series: reylo week 2018 [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, also some mentions of pregnancy/children at the end, eros and psyche retelling, it is kinda a fairytale sorry, reyloweek2018, so everyone other than rey and ben (and almost everyone but rey really) is pretty background, some mentions of violence because snoke is an asshat, they're gods! it's a whole thing, told in a fairytale kinda style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 09:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14446506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qiras/pseuds/qiras
Summary: "once upon a time..." that's how these tales usually begin, but that wouldn't be wholly accurate here. this is the tale of a young woman, fierce and unyielding but gentle and kind. once she was nothing and no one. now, she is a goddess. let me tell you, young one, of the patron goddess of orphans and children. let me tell you of rey.written for reyloweek2018 day 4: mythology





	stumble through heaven

A certain time ago, in a certain place, a time and place both neither too far from nor too close to ours, there lived a young woman. She was beautiful, as young women of these stories often are, but she was living a lie. Her name was Rey, and her parents had left her when she was very young. She told herself they would come back in order to conceal, even from herself, the truth: they had sold her.

Rey was strong, however, and if her hope was what kept her strong, then who could blame her for holding onto it, no matter how false? She left the man she’d been sold to and kept herself alive and safe, though not particularly well. She even found a small dog called BB-8 that kept her company.

And in fact, the dog would change her life.

One day, Rey was at the market, trading in animals she’d hunted and plants she’d gathered for other things she had need of when a great hulking beastly monster began wreaking havoc. Rey was not one to sit and scream, however, so she went forth and fought it. Actually, she defeated it. It wasn’t more than ten minutes before the monster lay dying at her feet, mingling its blood with the dust of the streets.

The monster was a curse upon her village sent by the usurper-god Snoke. Snoke and the gods and demigods and creatures that supported him were searching for the dog BB-8 because it held the key to a map that would lead Snoke to the last of the old gods-- the rightful gods-- so he could destroy them and rule the human world. When Rey destroyed Snoke’s monster, he was angered a mere mortal, and a girl at that, would dare rise against him, and he cursed the village again-- this time with famine.

The people of the village were not grateful to Rey; people are not good at remembering gratitude. And when Snoke demanded Rey as a bride-sacrifice, there was no one to fight for her for she had neither family nor friend.

So Rey was sent to appease the usurper-god, given as a gift, given as a bride. Her body was cleaned and perfumed, face painted, hair arranged, clothing neat and well-made. The village would not like Snoke to take offense from them again. They chained Rey to a rock high in the mountains and left her there. They were not confident she would stay otherwise, and rightfully so: Snoke’s priests had said the god would send Kylo Ren as her husband.

The villagers all agreed that was a pretty thing to call a death sentence.

Rey had heard of Kylo Ren. No one quite knew what he was. Some said a god mighty, some said a lesser god, some said a monster with little brain and less feeling, some said one of the many children Snoke had fathered with mortal girls. All knew what shape he took: that of a masked man dressed entirely in black. He was said to unmask only for those he would kill mere seconds later. Some of the same conjecture surrounded his masked visage, but all agreed nothing pleasant could be under the mask, else what reason would he possess to wear one?

But even chained to a rock, about to meet what well could be her death, Rey held her head high and made a plan. She would not go down without a fight.

When Rey saw Kylo Ren’s dark figure, she screamed and shook free of her chains, drawing the staff she'd hidden in the folds of her robes. Though she couldn't see, his eyes widened under his mask because he knew this girl, had seen her in his dreams for nearly twenty years.

No matter what his master might tell him, he could not hurt this girl.

With one wide sweep of his hand, he rendered her unconscious, catching her carefully in his arms, and transported them to his sanctuary, a beautiful house hidden far away, somewhere dark and safe from even Snoke.

When Rey woke, she woke in a strange place: a room with dark furnishings and dim light that was not uncomfortable, for all its impersonality. She was warm, at least, not hot and not cold, which was an extreme rarity for a girl who’d lived her life in an extreme place. The stone floors were cold against her feet as she walked. Rey found food in a kitchen and books in a library and clothes all seemingly made for her in a closet and in short, the place appeared to have everything she’d ever wanted.

Except for, of course, any other presence. Rey was just as alone here as she’d always been.

The first night, Rey tried to fall asleep when someone else entered her room. She sat up, hand on her staff, and called, “Who’s there?” in a low voice.

“Do not be afraid,” the person returned-- a man, by the sound of it. “I am your husband, Rey.”

But that only made Rey fear more. This was Kylo Ren, in her bedroom. For all she knew, he expected some kind of wedding night. If she were someone else, she might have trembled, but she was Rey, and so she only clung to her staff more tightly.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” the dark shape at the foot of her bed said. “I will not hurt you.”

“Then let me see you,” Rey demanded.

The man-- her _husband_ \-- flinched. “I cannot.”

“Why are you here?” Rey asked, drawing her bedsheets closer to her body.

“I only wish to sleep next to you, wife.” He sensed her hesitation and unease, and added, “I will not touch you unless you wish it.”

She opened her blankets and allowed him to climb in. “We do not know each other,” she said stiffly.

He asked, “Would it really make you feel better were you to know me?” and she had to concede that maybe it would not.

“However,” said Rey, “I would like to know who my husband is. All I have now is a name, _Kylo Ren_.”

He flinched when she said the name, and told her, “No. Kylo Ren is Snoke’s dog. I am not. Not when I am here.” It wasn’t a lie. With Rey, quite literally the girl of his dreams, he felt a different person than he had in decades.

“Then what am I to call you, _husband_?”

The man paused before offering her a name. “Ben. That was my name, in the time before.”

Rey hummed and rolled onto her side, still holding her staff, and bid him good night.

He was gone when she woke.

That was how Rey spent her time in that new, strange place: during the daylight hours, she explored her home and did what she pleased; spent time outside with the plants in the garden, drew, read, even taught herself some things about cooking; and once night fell, her husband came to her and slept in her bed, or maybe she slept in his.

Every night, she would ask him to tell her more of himself, and he would share something with her: his favorite color, a story from when he’d been a young god, which kinds of weather he liked and disliked-- and Rey would respond in kind, sharing something of herself with him too. Eventually, she even felt she knew him, felt she was no longer afraid of her husband, and felt the disconnect between Ben and Kylo Ren. There was a darkness to him, yes, one not very far removed from the darkness in her, but he had light as well. They were even friends.

He still did not touch her, something for which she was grateful. They were coming to trust and care for each other, yes, but it was a long, slow, road, and had he tried to touch her, it would have been destroyed utterly.

Nor did he let her see his face. Ben would give her no explanation for that, either, only insisting it would be dangerous for her to see his face and it would be best left alone. Rey allowed it. Perhaps she was afraid of what she would see. Perhaps she truly did trust him, though she rankled a little at the idea of needing protection.

There was a day she realized she cared for him, maybe even loved him. It was perhaps a year after she’d left her village, though she thought time might work differently in her home and didn’t really bother to keep track of time. Rey was outside in the gardens, eating her lunch in the grass among the flowerbeds, and a small creature came tripping up to her. It was a little cat, striped-gray. It very generously allowed her to pet it, and then, deciding it liked her and she could thus be trusted, it curled in her lap, completely asleep almost instantly.

The cat stayed with her throughout the day, and it seemed to want her attention every few seconds. She didn’t mind; it was nice to have something to give her attention to. When Ben came to her that night, she introduced him to her new pet, but the way he reacts gave her pause. “Wait,” she said. “Did you get me a cat?”

Though she could not see, she was sure he blushed before admitting he had, remembering her complaints of loneliness and boredom. He’d promised her she was not alone and she’d told him the same, and it seemed he intended to make good on that promise.

Realizing that brought a rush of warmth and tenderness to Rey’s chest. For only the third time, she touched him, and for the first time, she kissed him, and she did not stop him when he rolled her under him and slipped his hands beneath to meet her bare skin.

Night after night, they spent together, and still, he never showed her his face. She felt it enough to know there was nothing terrifyingly wrong with it. His skin felt like another human’s, and his lips felt like heaven, and she liked his nose and when it touched her skin, and she knew the shape of his ears with her tongue and loved them, too. Still, he insisted she could never see his face. Rey’s conclusion was that he must be afraid.

She was correct, though not in the way she expected.

Eager to prove he had nothing to fear from her, that there was no way he could lose her love, she hid a candle and a match in the table by their bed. One night, once they were sated and he was sleeping, she lit the candle and gasped when she finally saw his face. He was beautiful. And he was _hers_. Rey recognized him, had seen him in her dreams since she was a child, and she wondered if he hadn’t always felt familiar to her.

Ben-- Kylo Ren-- woke to his wife standing above him, his face bathed in light, but golden this time, not green. “What have you done?” he cried as his hands twitched at his sides.

“I... I don’t...” his beautiful, impulsive, stubborn Rey stammered. He should have known she would not let this go. He should have given her an explanation.

(She should have trusted him. She should have waited for one.)

“You have to go now,” he groaned, and his hands clenched in the bedsheets. “Quickly!”

Rey’s chin tilted up defiantly. “I am not leaving you.”

“You have seen my face and sealed this fate,” he said remarkably calmly, considering his hands were busy tearing their blankets to shreds. “I am cursed to be compelled to end anyone who sees my face. Go. I will try to send you away, but the curse is stronger--” he broke off, panting-- “stronger when you are close. Go!”

Rey turned to flee, and hot wax from her candle dripped into a diagonal burn across his face, down his bare chest, marking him forever as hers. As she exited her bedchamber, her home fell away around her, and her world was once again black.

She awoke in a field, green and purple surrounding her. Perhaps Ben had remembered how she hated the desert. For a moment, Rey allowed herself to cry. But then she had never really been a crying girl. It took time and energy and water Rey had to dedicate largely to staying alive. And she’d always been a fire-and-teeth girl, anyway, so it wasn’t long before she pulled herself together and set her jaw.

Rey would get him back. She would break his curse. He was her husband, her lover, her equal partner in every way, and she would have him. No one would be allowed to take him from her.

Rey wandered the earth, searching for any tale of Kylo Ren she could find, but that did not serve her as well as she’d hoped. Most people were afraid of Kylo Ren, too afraid to speak of him. So instead, Rey began asking about Ben. It took weeks, but an old woman by the name of Maz who lived in the city was willing to tell her of him. Him, the child of the old gods Han and Leia who had disappeared when Snoke crept into the home of the gods, whose fate no one could be certain of, who had always been darker than his family should like. She wove a tale of a lonely boy, powerful and afraid, who may have been killed or captured by Snoke, but Maz suspected he had joined the usurper-god. Maz knew the goddess Leia, she explained, and the way the goddess Leia had spoken of her son...

Maz was right, of course, but Rey did not tell her this, only thanked her and made to continue on her way.

“Wait!” Maz cried, and Rey turned back. “There is a young man who knows how to find the old gods and those on their side. Would you like to meet him?” “Yes,” Rey said. His name was Finn, and he had her dog, BB-8. Rey had missed the little creature, and it was nice to be reunited, but it made her think of her little grey cat-- but Ben would keep it safe for her. Of course he would.

Finn was nice, and he and Rey got along. If she’d had a family like other people, Rey thought, Finn could have been her brother.

“What do you know of Ben Solo?” Rey asked one night as they sat by the campfire.

“Nothing,” Finn replied. “But I know of Kylo Ren.”

He was a demigod, he told her, son of Phasma, the new goddess of war. He’d witnessed the massacre of a village. He’d been supposed to take part in the massacre. After, he’d renounced his mother and joined the old gods, stomach turned by the senseless violence. Kylo Ren had been there that day, and he’d fought with a cruel ferocity that chilled Finn’s heart. He warned if Rey were to seek Kylo Ren, she must be wary. He was dangerous and evil, in Finn’s judgement.

His story did not sway her. “He has erred,” Rey readily admitted, “but he is kind with me. He has his own distaste for Snoke’s methods. I know he does. He may be darker than his mother, but he has light inside of him. He was confused, but no longer,” she said. “If I go to Ben, he will turn from Snoke.”

“If you are determined,” Finn said, “I will help you. You do know him better than I.” He reached into his satchel and retrieved a staff much like Rey’s own, collapsible and steel, but this staff was much higher-quality, and when she grasped it, it glowed. “This belonged in another form to Anakin the sun god before his fall. Should you need to, this will enable you to protect yourself and defeat Kylo Ren.”

Rey knew she would not need to defend herself from Ben, not ever, but she replaced her staff with the one Finn offered her regardless and thanked him.

In another week, they arrived at the home of the self-exiled god of the clouds Luke Skywalker. “What do you know of Ben Solo?” Rey asked.

Luke knew, of course, much about Ben. He told her of his sister’s only child, of how friendless he was, everyone afraid of Ben becoming like his fallen grandfather. How Snoke had seen in Ben his chance to rule the gods at last. How he’d poisoned Ben’s mind, cruelly broke and twisted and shaped him until Snoke was the only being Ben thought he could rely on, until Ben would no longer trust his family. Luke admitted his shame in the matter, admitted to the confrontation that was never meant to be a confrontation with Ben that had ended with the old gods in exile and Snoke upon the throne.

“He is powerful and under Snoke’s thumb,” Luke finished.

Rey looked at him curiously during his tale, but when he finished speaking, she said calmly, “And still will I save him.”

“This is not going to go the way you think it will, Rey,” Luke said.

Rey regarded the old god coolly. “Perhaps. But he is mine, and I am his, and I am determined he will be under Snoke’s control no longer.”

“Then take this,” Luke said, drawing from his robe a strip of gauzy fabric and offering it to Rey. “If you wear this, Kylo Ren will not be able to enter your mind when you face him.” Rey knew she would not need to keep Ben from entering her mind, but still she accepted the piece of fabric and tied it in her hair. “Thank you.”

A week later, she and Finn arrived at the hiding-place of the old gods and their supporters. The throne room where Leia Organa, goddess of war and wisdom, sat was not well-decorated as it ought to have been. Her husband, Han Solo, god of mischief and travel, sat next to her. Rey might have been awed by them, if she’d any emotion to spare for that. Instead, she knelt at Leia’s feet (Ben’s mother, her _husband’s_ mother-- her mother, in a strange way?) and asked, “What do you know of Ben Solo?” And Leia spoke, not of the boy he had been or the man he was now, but of who her son could become. She told of her son’s heart, always soft, always too vulnerable. She told of her son’s mind, clever and strong, always searching for something he could not quite find. She told of her son’s soul, shattered and splintered, but still good, still clinging to something bright and strong within him. “He can be a good man, I know,” Leia said. “And no one is ever really lost, as my brother has told me.”

“He was good to me,” Rey said. “He was good with me. He is not lost. I cannot save him, but I can help him save himself.” 

Leia motioned, and a nearby nymph brought her a delicately carved wooden box, from which she extracted a shining vial of shimmering purple liquid. She stood and drew Rey to her feet as well, pressing the vial into the young girl’s hand. “Take this, and drink it down before you must face Snoke. It will shield you from my son’s curse. I only have enough for it to be used once, and I have saved it for you.”

Rey knew that is the only protection she really needed, though she would use her other gifts, and genuinely said, “Thank you.”

When she traveled to the palace of the usurper-god, she traveled alone. Snoke was almost certain to allow a small mortal girl to escape his notice, in spite of her enormous power. Those discounted by tyrants are the ones who defeat them in the end.

Leia’s home had been neat and clean-- not fitting her station as the queen of the gods, but warm and comfortable all the same, like the home of the gods should be. Snoke’s palace was cold and dead, beautiful and richly decorated, to be sure, but frightening. Nothing green would there grow. There was no balance in that place ruled only by death and decay.

She paused on the threshold of the palace to secure the band in her hair and draw her light-staff. Out of her pocket, she took the vial, broke the stopper, and drank it down in one swallow. It tasted of sweet berries and Ben, and it made her heart ache.

Her husband was waiting for her outside the usurper-god’s throne room. “You were not to come find me,” he said stiffly.

“You are my husband, and I love you,” Rey replied fiercely. “I will not let you be taken from me.”

Ben’s eyebrows drew together, and he looked at her strangely. “The curse is not affecting me.”

“Good,” Rey said, but she did not explain further. Suddenly, she looked at him shyly. “Is this... is it alright, that I am here?”

“I wish you were not,” he said, “because I wish to keep you safe. But I am ready now, to free myself.”

She smiled tenderly and brought her hand up to cradle the face she’d seen only once in person, the face covered still by a black mask. “I’ve missed you. Come home.”

“Yes,” he said. Rey took the band from her hair and tied it around his neck, hidden beneath his robes, and together they entered Snoke’s throne room.

Snoke cackled and postulated, as every villain of every story has always done, but Snoke was never the focus of our tale. Neither of our heroes listened to his words. Ben focused all his power upon turning the staff Snoke had seized from Rey, even as Snoke did his best to tear open again all the old wounds he had. Ben had to save himself and his lover. Snoke’s reign of terror was over. Nothing he said mattered. Rey paid him no mind even as he offered to reveal her parents to her. She knew what her parents were. They mattered naught to her. And as Snoke boasted, her lover manipulated her light-staff and ignited its fiery ends, plunging through him. Unthinkingly, Rey summoned the staff to her, and she and Ben fought side-by-side, defeating Snoke’s guards.

Ben looked at her hungrily and she came to him. He removed his mask, tossing it to the side, and kissed her then, fierce and fiery, and Rey wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said. “Is the curse lifted?”

“Yes,” he said. “I could feel the compulsion tugging me to you even with the presence of the potion from my mother, though I could ignore it. Now it is gone entirely.”

“Good,” she said. “I should like to spend the rest of my days with you, husband.” 

He flinched at the reminder of her mortality, but said nothing.

Together, they returned to the place of the old gods, and they became simply the gods once more; Leia was restored to her rightful throne in her rightful place. Many desired her son to be punished, but she would not hear of anything harsh. The only punishment she would hand down to him was an exile from the mountain home where most of the gods lived for at least one hundred years-- an exile Ben desired anyway. One quiet morning before his sentencing was finished, while he was yet with the rest of the gods, he went to his mother to ask for something. Of course, being Leia, she already knew what he desired and was keen to grant it to him.

“Of course I will give her immortality. Neither of you should be without the other,” his mother said, patting his hand firmly. “Besides, I have only just got a daughter. I am not keen to lose her so soon or easily.”

Rey accepted her immortality when Leia offered, but she had to ask her--

“Will my immortality be given to my children?”

“Yes, of course, your children will be gods as well.” Leia scrutinized the young girl, and then says with a half smile, “Even if the child is already in your womb now, as a mortal girl.”

Rey smiled, a pretty thing full of happy secrets and love and obvious relief. “Don’t tell Ben. I’m not sure yet.”

Leia wouldn’t, she promised.

Rey and her husband left the home of the gods to live in their own home. Recovery, of course, was not immediate for either one of them. Rey and Ben both had their own traumas, but they had each other, and soon, a daughter, too. And they lived, not always happily, but never alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a little different style than i usually write; it's very... narrative-heavy. i wanted to tell it like a fairytale would be told, like an oral story, and that really heavily influenced everything. thanks for reading! i hope you liked it! and feel free to come say hi on 


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